Tia Made

This layout won *** FIRST PLACE*** at the 2005 Great American Scrapbook Convention!!!! :)
One of three winning layouts...out of five submitted...

This is a bittersweet accomplishment as this was created only a few short months after this "Georgeous" 28-month-old , George Bampton Little, was run over and killed by his beloved Daycare Provider, who had cared for and cherished his every breathing moment from his first day with her at a tender 6-weeks-old until that horribly unimaginably nightmarish day, April 28, 2003 at 8:30am, one day shy of his being 29-months-old... He was our ONLY nephew, brother to our ONLY niece, Tori...Tori was born 8 weeks early, she was sweet and tiny and such a tender blessing arriving after 36 hours of labor on Nov.1st, 1996...prouder Aunts and Uncles would NEVER be found...she was the very center of our newlywed existence :) We were there with her when they heard "The Murmur"...that led to trips to specialists and terrifying news that this tiny creature was hanging on to life by the tiniest thread...she was to have a 3 hour surgery on her miniscule heart, the size of an almond!!!! She had several defects, the one that would inevitably take her precious life if not corrected was a kink in one of her main arteries, slowly starving her tiny body of precious blood...no wonder she slept ALL the time and was INCREDIBLY difficult to rouse just to get her to barely feed...
So, at 5 1/2-weeks-old, the docs took our little wonder in their mighty arms, put her on a ventilator, deflated her left lung, and cut out the kink, resecting the artery allowing precious blood to course throughthat tiny 5 pound body...
They said she'd be in the hospital 30 days...she was out in 11 days!!! :) She hasn;t slowed down yet!!! :) She's brilliant, active, and you'd NEVER known how close she came to the unthinkable...
This was initially done in an attempt to begin "to heal" the unfathomable ache deep in our souls...
There are friends, in a vain effort to comfort, who said,"Just be glad it wasn't Jackson"...
Just because he didn't come from my body doesn't mean we didn't treat him as though he wasn't OUR's...
We had SOOOO many hindrances/difficulties in our Hurculean effort to conceive AND maintain a pregnancy...actually, conceiving was VERY easy for us, it was staying pregnant with which my body had SERIOUS, life-threatening issues...
Teresa, George and Tori's Momma and Gregory's older sister, and I were joyously pregnant at the same time...
She was due Dec. 29, 2000 and I was due April 26, 2001...what a GLORIOUS time!!!! until October when a blood clot insidiously formed in the ambilicus and maliciously, hatefully, heart-wrenchingly killed our tiny baby...Unless this has happened to you, you have NO CONCEPT of the unexplainable shame, seething anger, and unconsolable grief/guilt that comes with the undeniable fact that YOUR OWN BODY killed your baby!!!! Not easily overcome, nor consoled, nor understood...
Needless to say, there was a TREMENDOUS amount of raw, bare emotions that needed an outlet...after my 16th surgery, the miscarriage's subsequent Emergency D & C, the hormones surging thru my system, I ended up with SEVERAL evil cysts on my ovaries that HAD to be removed on the day before baby George was born...
To our great dismay, we missed the long awaited arrival and textbook perfection entrance of one LARGE George Bampton Little....on his Due Date :) Thus, Georgeous' perfect arrival, healthy and whole, was exaulted by our entire family and beloved friends!!!! He was smart as a whip, tall for his age, healthy as a horse. The only time he was sick, required a week long stay a few weeks before he left us...
To our great yet guarded joy, we were pregnant , once again, in January of 2001...just a few short weeks after my 17th surgery...I didn't even have my stitches out!!!! Until that time, we took steps to ensure that if anything happened to us, George and Tori would be the sole beneficiaries of our "fortune" ha ha...we're teachers...what fortune??? :) So you see, George and Tori were as if they were our very own children...After Jackson was born, people were amazed at how laid back we were and so adept at caring for him, being first time parents and all...we always told people that Jackson was in our eyes, our third child... :) So, George's death was more than just the loss of a nephew, it was the loss of a part of us...